TOMATOMETER

Audience Score

42 Up Ratings & Reviews Explanation

42 Up
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Movie Info

Michael Apted's renowned series tests the maxim by returning every seven years to 14 British children originally profiled in 7 UP (1964). He began the series seeking to confirm the class distinctions were alive and well in England. And while their accents are a dead give-away as to who studied ballet and who drives a cab, there are also remarkable similarities--as youth gives way to middle-age, parents die, and children prepare to leave the nest.

Audience Reviews for 42 Up

Dec 03, 2018

A surprising installment in the Up Series for those who don't believe you can change your life (sometimes quite radically, I would say) after you're 35 - and right when you think you have seen it all, things get even more interesting and impressive as we approach the end of the film.

It's good to see lives turning around and to see the mothers start to think about careers again. It's quite clear how the effect of documenting these people has changed them, though some more than others.

SEVEN UP Series (1964-->onwards)
Directed by Michael Apted.
This realism-style of documentary film-making was truly innovative in its time, a fact that in these days of 24hr-a-day Reality TV one can easily overlook.
Director, Apted, did not select particularly special children & yet, each in their own way, IS special. One feels privileged to be permitted to share a little of their lives & the journeys that those lives take them on.
It is also interesting (& sometimes confronting) to recognise parallels in one's own life to those seen on screen & has certainly given me pause to think at times.
I don't believe a film-maker could hope to achieve more than that.
****4 & a half out of 5 stars****
(This R/V applies equally to all films in the series.)